School Was a Problem

Just another quick word on the wonders of home study.

I have never seen T so relaxed.

He is EXTREMELY hyper-vigilant, as a result of spending years in a violent home. He checks all the doors and windows every night and every morning. He notices the slightest movement. He frets when we go on vacation until he gets the lay of the land.

A classroom is a nightmare for a kid like that. And because he struggles to behave himself when he's anxious, he was often seated in the front of the class where the teacher could keep an eye on him. That meant all the other kids were sitting BEHIND him: the worst possible arrangement for a hyper-vigilant, anxious child.

Now that he studies at home, his teacher reports he's getting all Bs in school (and he's not working very hard at that). He sleeps late, naps in the afternoon, and works when he feels like it. I'm sure that sounds indulgent to other parents, but it's working for us. He has gained weight (a good thing, since he has been borderline anorexic in the past), smiles regularly, and recently got himself on a gym routine. He has time to go to therapy now, and he's not exhausted from a day at school when he gets there. He's on track to finish high school early. Of his own initiative, he got a job counselor and began spending part of each day looking for jobs. He's taking a college history class once a week, and managing to get by there too.

We don't sit at work waiting for yet another phone call from a teacher or administrator. We don't have to worry about the frightening friends he might be making at school - like a lot of traumatized kids, he gravitates to the bottom of the social ladder at school, because that's where he tends to feel safe. We are able to discipline him in the way that we know works well - with a gentle system of incentives and praise for desirable behavior, and a quick, logical consequence for misbehavior. I don't have to think so hard about parenting strategies, because there are fewer crises to manage.

Looking back, school was a problem. A minefield of inconsistent discipline, social pressure, physical and psychological strain. Teachers and administrators often misunderstood him, and over-punished him. He couldn't find the peace he needed to evolve. Fewer, more trustworthy adults and no crowded, noisy environments have done wonders for his stability. He does get lonely sometimes. But it's a temporary sort of loneliness, and he's learning to solve it with deliberate choices rather than the manic, panicked social behavior we saw last year. It's a good time.

Homeschooling

Home schooling (really we're doing supervised independent study if you want to get technical) is going well.

I like a few things about it. Number one, T gets to sleep more, and so do we. Teens need their sleep! If T can sleep til 9 and have an afternoon nap, he's a lot mellower. He benefits from a lot of "down time."

Also, schooling him from home is like having a lot of homework, in a good way. The homework is directly linked to his credits - it's not seen as "extra" on top of other expectations, like showing up and behaving in class. The learning is the thing. He has a nice retired teacher who meets with him once a week, reviews his assignments, and gives him new assignments. There are fewer distractions and clearer expectations.

Which brings me to my next point: homeschooling strikes me as a healing opportunity, because it gets him a lot more one-on-one time with adults. His teacher sits with him for an hour at a time and focuses only on him. We sit with him for part of the day and help him with his work. He likes to sit very close to us, and he organizes our schedule, letting us know who is helping with what each day. It's a chance for a lot of proximity, and eye contact, and engagement, and yet another way to show him that he's important.

Neglect is a bigger factor in his background than I realized, and only as we've settled in to a deep long-term attachment have I been able to see that. He has many of the hallmarks of a neglected kid to this day, which is especially evident to me now because his more distracting, dramatic trauma-related behavior has settled down. He behaves like a parent sometimes, he has trouble in school, he has bursts of temper that he can't control, and he's extremely controlling about his food. Anything that surrounds him with love and attention helps him relax and grow. In that context, it makes sense that sitting close to us and getting daily attention from us and from his teacher are beneficial. In place of traditional school, with its emphasis on discipline, it feels like we've arrived, for the moment, at a situation where his needs rather than his behavior are the focus.

Sometimes he's bored and lonely for his peers - he's taking a class at the local junior college one night a week, as much for the social stimulation as for the credits. But I'll take a little boredom over the chaos of trying to navigate him through the school system anyday. Plus, I think having him out of school forces him to try harder to make actual plans with his friends, rather than just hooking up after school. For a kid struggling with impulse control, that's a good thing.

Help

Well, it’s been quite a week.

As T unravels these past few months, we’ve experienced dramatic truancy, daily marijuana use (before and after school most days), and stealing, culminating with an arrest, for petty theft, on his birthday no less.

This week, we hit the wall. He was accused for the second time of stealing (from a teacher!), disrupting the classroom, and expelled from school. At home he was vengeful and full of rage, or withdrawn and disconnected. It’s hard to encapsulate in words, but the most alarming thing is that T is not a kid who is routinely delinquent – his nature is to be sensitive and soulful. His misbehavior has an aspect that hits you right in the gut – it feels wrong on an instinctive, animal level. Something is wrong! it screams. I suppose that’s a distinguishing quality of crisis.

Yesterday, in a tizzy, and with the help of a friend who happens to be an LCSW, I wrote a letter and emailed it to his past and present therapists and social workers. “I need help getting an elevated level of care for T” I said. It ended “We are committed to T but we urgently need help meeting his needs.”

By evening, we had an emergency psychiatric team on our doorstep. (Thanks, by the way, to his FORMER social worker, who was the only one who responded in a helpful way—we have yet to even hear back from his primary caseworker.)

I thought the problem was addiction and substance abuse. But last night I learned that I might be wrong.

They spent four hours here, talking to T, talking to us, searching his room, and formulating an opinion. Then they called us all together. It wasn’t what I expected. They said they considered hospitalizing him, because it’s clear he’s in crisis, but decided it wouldn’t help. He has PTSD and a hospital environment is likely to be overwhelming and frightening for him. They said that we are dealing with serious confusion stemming from sexual abuse, combined with puberty, and that kids like T often have their first major mental health crisis right about now. They said that his emerging sexuality combined with his abuse history lead T to fear he may hurt people and become a bad person. And so he is acting like a monster to try to save people from the harm he imagines he might do—and to try to get us to pay attention to what he can’t put in words.

I did not see that coming, though of course, as soon as they said it, it made perfect sense. They walked in and put their finger right on the raw nerve that is causing daily convulsions right now. Their skill and clarity were truly awe-inspiring. He has never discussed sexual abuse with a therapist before, and I'm the first adult he confided in about it. And yet it took these two doctors less than half an hour to identify the problem and open it up.

They had spare, direct advice for us. First, they said he feels safe with us and our home is the right place for him. He feels loved and secure here, they said, and that is part of why he is confronting his demons now. Second, they told me to adjust my expectations. “But he’s facing criminal charges!” I protested. They said yes, and there’s very little you can do about that. This is who he is and where you are right now. Deal with it.

They told us to let go of our desire to have him graduate from mainstream school. They said not to worry about the fact that his friends are dropouts and delinquents. “Those are the people he feels safe with, because he feels like he can’t hurt them or freak them out,” they said. They told us to let go of our attempts to treat the substance abuse, because it’s a symptom, not a cause. They told us to learn with him about the aftermath of sexual abuse and let him show his ugly bits. They said we must find ways to talk about what happened, and about sexuality, and help him do the same. They told us that “the human condition is to have both good and ugly feelings and thoughts” and to teach T that we are all complex in that way.

I learned so much last night. I learned that he wants help and he will comply. I learned that he trusts us. I learned that my expectations and sense of “normal” are getting in the way of recognizing his needs. We talked this morning, and he was calm, receptive and even grateful—I explained that the doctor talked to us about PTSD, that abused kids and soldiers who’ve been in wars often have PTSD, and that for now we need to make sure we reduce stress and avoid situations that are chaotic and noisy. He felt understood. He said he felt it might be best for him to be in a different school.

(As a side note, I have also learned this week that there is a HUGE difference in Los Angeles between Department of Mental Health programs and DCFS. That sounds like a bureaucratic distinction, but when you need somebody to help your troubled kid on a very bad day when the shit is raining down on your head, it’s a visceral thing. By using the right language, thanks to my friend, we got tapped into DMH, and to these two superhero ninja therapists in the middle of the night, after months of struggling with inadequate therapy and inattentive social workers.)

I don’t regret one moment I’ve spent with T. This week was horrible. I don’t know how we’ll find him a new school and a new therapist next week. I’m not sure I can stomach the external consequences that are being levied on him by people who know nothing of his story. But I understand that this is where we are, and I know that our job is to be his family. We are honest and we stand by each other in ways that I didn’t know were possible before. I am much stronger than I thought, and he is much more vulnerable than he realized. This kind of extreme parenting is exhausting, but I also find it to be soul-satisfying in its honesty, unpredictability and brutal acknowledgement of humanity in all its frailty and resilience. I find that happiness, for us, is not the avoidance of pain, but the acknowledgement of truth.

T Two

Recently we have been working on a theory that there are two T's. The first we call "T Number One." He is generally balanced, perhaps a bit mischievous, mostly compliant, and approaches life with reasonable moderation. He accurately perceives the world, and has the capacity for judgment. He is generally optimistic, or at least practical.

The second, "T Number Two", is self-destructive, angry, defiant, and extreme. He damages friendships and other relationships, and makes dangerous decisions. He has distorted, negative perceptions of the world.

This week, unfortunately, we started strong with T Number One, and then by Wednesday, we were living with T Number Two. That pattern isn't unusual - his number one trigger is school, and he rarely holds it together for an entire school week. I think often of the wisdom of something Foster Cline says: assume that the child is doing the best he can. T tries hard every week. It is agony for him to be unable to modify his self-destructive behavior. And this is the best he can do right now. We try to stretch the capacity of T Number One to hold it together, and right now we can't get past Wednesdays. If we get to Thursdays or - one can only hope! - Fridays by the end of his junior year, it will be a monumental achievement.

I don't mean that T literally has a split personality. In the professional writing on such subjects, I guess you'd say that T number one is "regulated" and T Number Two is "dysregulated." His periods of dysregulation come on like bad weather - you can see them approach, they are intense and disruptive, and they pass.

I love him so much and feel so much wonder at the progress he's made and the meaning he's brought to my life that I probably do not always state clearly how difficult it is to be his parent. I'd hate for any parent of a traumatized kid out there to feel like I'm having an easy time of it while they struggle. I am as vulnerable as anyone else and I feel beat up and victimized by his behavior sometimes. He is intensely angry for many very sound reasons, and that anger has festered in him for many years until he doesn't even know it's name and when it takes hold of him, he is formidably difficult and frankly abusive. I am a strong personality myself, an "alpha" as I have said before. And yet when he takes revenge because we've withheld his allowance because he's using it to buy drugs, or when he rages at me that he is going to tell the social worker on me because I have restricted his privileges after he was picked up by a truancy officer, I feel despondent and exhausted.

At those times, I do sometimes withdraw from him. I cannot always maintain the authoritative parental stance of being strong, wise and compassionate. I get rigid and angry. I want him to just go to school, to hold it together just for five days on end without getting high, cutting class, interrupting my workday with calls from the dean's office. I lose my ability to communicate compassionately.

When that happens, I wait. T Number Two is not reachable, but he also doesn't stick around for long. He is a construct, a puffed up angry false self, perhaps produced by extreme duress to protect a tender T Number One when he was younger and constantly under siege. Indeed, when the storm moves on, T is often unusually tender and communicative afterward. He is apologetic, but he's also very receptive. He reaches out with many little tendrils of attachment to make sure you are still there, and upon finding that you are, grows very soft.

I worry over how little time we have to try to help him learn to regulate his feelings and modify his behavior so that he can hold it together in the grown up world. He is okay when he is with us - weekends and holidays are invariably peaceful. But a child who cannot make it more than three days at school without a meltdown is likely to have similar difficulty holding a job, or getting through college. Someday soon, he will be out of high school, out of the foster care system, and (eventually) out of our home. He will have to make his way in a world that takes him at face value, doesn't know or much care about his history, and delivers harsh and sometimes long-lasting consequences. Preparing him for that world is a daunting challenge.

Parent/Teacher

This was our third parent/teacher night since T. moved in last year and we're getting the hang of it. Back when we were novice parents - having never parented before T. moved in last year at the age of 15 - we made some naive assumptions. We went to our first parent/teacher night expecting that the child we know and love at home is the same one his teachers get to see every day.

Silly us.

This year we're smarter. It no longer shocks us that T. is either an A student or a D student with no happy medium. It no longer mystifies us that the kid who is generally very orderly and organized at home is scattered and forgetful at school, arriving to class without his books, without the homework he did the night before. We weren't caught off guard this year to learn that, although he's serious and thoughtful and introverted at home, he's the clown and the life of the party in class.

T. is the kind of child who makes teachers eyes widen when you introduce yourself. At parent/teacher night, they tend to speak to the other parents in a quiet whisper, looking through their grade books and sharing marks and little tips on how the student can improve. When we introduce ourselves, they push their chair back, shove the grade book aside, and--more often than not--launch into a lengthy reflection on his "colorful" personality. Sometimes they are visibly discombobulated, their eyes searching ours for a clue as to how to control him. A few have been plain old rattled by him, unable to hold back a flood of frustration.

A very distinct profile emerges of the teacher to whom he responds best. They are always women, young, soft-spoken, firm, confident and adept. In these classes, he requires an occasional quiet correction but generally excels, earning As. Algebra and Biology have gone this way. Other classes--chemistry, PE, geometry--have not. His marks have little to do with the subject area, the time we spend helping him with his homework, or the intellectual rigor required by the discipline. They have everything to do with the dynamics of the classroom and the confidence of the teacher.

His clowning in class isn't a simple grasping for attention; its a symptom of anxiety. When I go to parent/teacher night, I see what T's day is like. The public address system is blaring. The school looks rather like a prison - bars on the windows, guards at the doors. The classrooms are crowded. In one of his classes today, another kid jokingly called him a crack baby. T. replied that in fact he had been born crack-addicted. That's what school is like for him. Very little of his day has to do with learning. He experiences school as an exercise in social control, humiliation, chaotic authority, and general pandemonium.

There are some bright points. His African American Studies teacher this semester is one of them. He takes the enlightened approach that his job as a teacher is not to set traps or catch the students with tricky quizzes and homework assignments. He wants to engage them and make them love learning and love life, and love learning about the world. It totally works. Class discussion spills over to our dinner table that evening - T. is so engaged, he wants to keep the conversation going and tell us what he's learned and share the opinions he's learned to articulate in the class. But there are so few teachers like him.

It's hard to parent a child like T. sometimes, because his intellectual capabilities and general wisdom are so at odds with his emotional maturity. He is both five and forty-five at the same time. We want to be sure we hold him to the highest standards of which he is capable. At the same time, we want to create an atmosphere at home where he can relax and get what he needs, and that means keeping stress to a minimum.

It's also hard to explain how tangled his history makes basic issues of behavior. In his early life, he learned to avoid abuse by being perfectly compliant. As an older child who badly wanted to find adoptive parents, he subjected himself to excessive self-discipline, disguising his rough edges and showing adults what he thought they wanted to see so that he would be a "desirable" child. So I often feel caught in a classic catch 22: if I hold him to the highest standards of academic achievement of which he's capable, I contribute to his success, but I also play into his perverse perfectionism and stress him out. If I parent to his emotional needs and allow him to relax and behave as the much younger child he is in terms of his emotional development, then I fear that I'm undermining his potential for academic achievement.

So I ask myself a lot what matters. The part of him that is the youngest, freshest, newest and most vulnerable is the part that is loving and accepting of love. It's the part that recently started blowing us air kisses when he leaves for school in the morning. Bio parents who start with babies have years to build bonds before they have to turn their attention to preparing a kid for college. We arrived late to the party and we have to make choices about which message to send him at any given moment, and which growth buttons to push.

Drinking

Long time no blog, because the back-to-school season and a busy phase at work kept my fingers from my keyboard.

Back-to-school: a mixed blessing for sure. We don't need to fill T.'s days. On the other hand, he's a junior in high school in a big city with lots of opportunities to get up to his business and a certain fragility in terms of his self-esteem.

Last Monday, we busted him leaving for school with a Coke bottle full of vodka and orange juice. How did we find this out? Well, we read his text messages. Imagine my horror when I discovered a text letting his friends know he'd be bringing some vodka 'n orange for an early morning rendezvous. Imagine how much I kicked myself for even having vodka in the house! Until now, he has been entirely averse to alcohol (but not marijuana), but it was stupid to have it around.

Had this happened last year, we would have freaked out completely. We're becoming more seasoned. After he left the house, we actually kind of shrugged and sat down to our morning coffee before thinking about whether he needs rehab or just a good grounding. In part, we've learned to manage our reactions better in order to preserve our own health and sanity. Adopting a teenager can be like going from zero to 100 mph without a period of adjustment and the g-force occasionally leaves us limp. Panic is the enemy, and no good for our partnership either.

I still didn't have the answer when I got home from work that evening. T was playing video games quietly in the tv room. I decided to just wing it. I went it, sat down close to him, and said "I think you left for school this morning with vodka in your orange juice. I don't want to argue about whether that is or isn't true. I just really want to hear from you why you did that. I'm worried and I need to understand what's going on."

He turned to me with his huge round eyes. He had a gentle sad expression. "I don't know why I did it," he said. He's not a particularly good liar, nor a particularly manipulative child. He looked genuinely quizzical. I said, "Were you angry? Have you been drinking before school? Did you hope that I'd notice?"

"I haven't been drinking," he said. "This was the first time. But my behavior has always been a problem. I don't know why. I do good in my classes, but I behave badly." He really does talk like this sometimes - in part, the "system" as he calls it taught him to be self-critical in this way. But it's also part of his personality.

"Why do you think that is?" I asked.

He made his puzzled face. Then he said softly, "I think about so many things. Like my mom is never going to talk to me again. And my brother, he's still in the system. We came in together, but now I'm out of the system and he's still in it. I think about it all the time."

Nobody planted this idea in his mind, and it's rare that he refers to his various tragedies - he despises the idea that anyone might feel sorry for him. He and I have talked about his mom and his brother a few times over the past year, but not often, by his choosing. We tried visits with his brother, but T. shut it down - the dynamic between them is extremely complicated and painful. For awhile, he had polite contact with his mom (and so did I, to a limited extent) but she flew into a rage last spring and cut him off. There is no easy obvious "fix" in this situation. It will take a lifetime to make sense of it.

We talked for awhile about the difference between teenage experimentation with drugs and alcohol and using drugs and alcohol to cover up feelings that seem unmanageable. I told him that if I feel that substance abuse has got him by the tail, I am going to step in because I love him. T. and I have gone many rounds trying to make progress on reducing his use of marijuana. Consistent limits are a necessity, but the only thing that works so far is when we ask him to modify his behavior just because we care about him. No other consequences or rewards have made one lick of difference. I offered that instead of punishment, what I'd like is a quiet evening without television or video games, and for us to spend some time talking a bit more about what's going on with him.

It was a bumpy conversation. We sat together in his room for awhile and he stared at the floor. He told me how he hasn't been able to cry since the last time he was removed from his family. I told him how I think about his birth mom a lot and feel badly that she missed out on his childhood (they didn't meet until he was twelve). We talked about how maybe his mom doesn't know what to say and how to make it right between them. By way of helping him depersonalize his mother's rage, we talked about how using drugs for a long time change someone's personality and make it very hard for them to control their anger. He told me that there's a "secret reason" why his mom doesn't want to talk to him or any of his siblings, a reason he can't share with me. We talked about some options for rebuilding his relationship with his brother, and he offered that he thought he'd like to start with regular phone calls.

I also asked him what he would do if he were the parent and he found out his most-loved child was taking vodka to school in the morning. He got a very serious look on his face - he slips easily into the role of parent/counselor and he really likes this approach. "Well," he said, "I would ask him. Did he drink it? If so, I would treat it very seriously. Did he sell it? That would be very bad, and he would have to lose his privileges and be in big trouble. But if he took it and gave it to someone else, and he didn't know why, and it was his first time, I would talk with him and try to understand him, and I would let him know that if he EVER, EVER does this again, there will be very serious consequences."

That's some childish logic, and not the final word on the subject. Obviously giving alcohol to other kids at school is totally unacceptable. But I do appreciate the progress he's making toward recognizing a connection between his use of mood-altering substances and the pain and confusion that come from the losses he's sustained.

Since our conversation, we've had nearly two weeks of much more moderate, relaxed behavior. Recently, he asked me to fire our therapist. "We do our own therapy," he said. "She doesn't know me." (In another post, I'll write about our frustrations with therapy and the general lack of services for teenagers like him.) T. makes me realize all the time that all that keeps us from falling off the edge sometimes is knowing that we don't want to hurt or disappoint someone who's opinion we care about, someone we feel really knows us. We can't fix what's happened or stop T. from feeling deep grief about everything he's lost. But we can sit with him, know him well, be honest with him when he's off-track and let him be honest with himself.

Doing the Best He Can

No week is easy with T., though they have a certain amusing rhythm, but this one just kinda sucked.

I've written often about T.'s ability to bond, which is extraordinary in a child with his background. He has a strong capacity (and even longing) for intimacy at home. Building and maintaining that bond is a first priority for us. It can make life at home a lot of fun. However, when we're all out in the world going about our daily business, outside our family life, things get messy. T.'s ability to bond does not extend to adults outside his most intimate circle.

This shows up in a pattern of defiance at school and he has conflicts with every male teacher he's encountered in the time I've known him. For a hurt child with PTSD whose been through 16 homes, school is a horror shop of noise, chaos, inconsistent authority, lax structure, social anxiety and occasional threats of physical violence.

His vulnerability does not, of course, manifest as such. It shows up as what I call peacock behavior - busting out the colors. The first time I attended his parent/teacher conference, I hardly recognized the kid that some of his teachers were describing - a defiant show off who pushes buttons. Then I realized that the teachers who describe this "other" T are all men, and tend to be the ones whose approach to discipline is to challenge him in front of other kids or threaten punishment they don't necessarily deliver. They trigger his most difficult behaviors. He doesn't even know what's happening - they set off a physical, limbic reaction in him.

All this leaves T. in a highly stressed state much of the time and he self-medicates by smoking - marijuana when he can get it, and it appears one can readily purchase it in the hallway between classes. The school is so short-staffed that lunch and break periods have turned into an anarchic sort of bazaar of vices. (And this high school is in the top 3 in the entire county.) So we are addressing that too, and it kicks his already tenuous situation at school up a whole other notch.

None of this is new, and we were more or less prepared for this when we started this whole journey. And I love him so much through it all. The thing I'm learning is that it's necessary to settle in to the rhythm of it - to stop responding to the drama and turmoil of the school week as a series of crises and just accept that it's where we are right now. I need to be a fierce advocate but I also need to maintain the endurance to advocate for him for a long time, so I need to weed out any desperation or self-deception that creep in. That's essential to my own well-being, of course. But achieving that resilience is also necessary in order to show him that we accept where he's at right now, and while we insist on a few really important rules and expectations, we never, ever change our minds about him. That's hard to do when you're exhausted.

Mary the Mom turned me on to a writer who said something so memorable. "Assume that the child is doing the best he can." To be honest, some days, I recite that to myself and think "Oh wow, really?" And he is. He absolutely is. He gets up and goes to school every day and mostly goes to his classes and he either gets As or Fs. He frequently acts out such that he is nailed for "cleanup in lieu of suspension" which in my book means "let the troubled kids substitute for janitorial staff because we don't really want to deal with them." And this is the best he can do right now. So my job is to talk to continue to get him to therapy, to talk to his counselors and the principals and vice principals and deans and teachers and try to work out the right equation for him so "the best he can do" can eventually grow just a little bit better.

We have an upcoming summit that we requested with one of the vice principals and his counselor. His intellect needs to be fed and challenged, and his anxiety needs to be soothed. He ought to be in a special school for kids with unusual emotional needs and behavioral challenges. He needs teachers who are cognizant that they are dealing with a CHILD, not a man, and that he will give back what he sees reflected in their eyes. Finding that in a large urban public high school system is tough.